Compaq ProLiant 1000 Compaq Leadership in Server Innovations - Page 6

Doc. No. ECG072/0298 WHITE PAPER COMPAQ LEADERSHIP IN SERVER INNOVATIONS q PCI Hot Plug - an industry standard technology of which Compaq led the development, ... allows a systems administrator to change a PCI peripheral board in a server without interrupting user service by powering down the server. The systems administrator can replace existing PCI Boards with the same or with new versions of the board and driver software, or can add new, previously uninstalled, board and driver software while the server is running.5 Key Benefits - Increased data availability without having to purchase new server hardware. By bringing this technology to the industry as a standard, Compaq has made PCI Hot Plug accessible to a much broader customer base. Intel and others have also licensed Compaq's implementation of the PCI Hot Plug hardware, which once again demonstrates Compaq's technology leadership of useful innovations in the computing industry. Compaq Advantage - Compaq is the first company to market PCI Hot Plug as an industry standard. Other companies' systems without PCI Hot Plug technology may result in costly downtime. q Intelligent Hot-Pluggable Power Supply (IPS) - enables a server to communicate more intelligently with the power supply, providing much more pertinent status information. In addition, an IPS allows the system administrator to troubleshoot more effectively when problems arise, and, in some cases, prevent problems or downtime from occurring at all. In addition, an IPS automatically performs several key functions that ensure the most efficient use of resources.6 Key Benefits - Increased reliability due to self-test and load balancing, increased availability due to N + 1 redundancy and hot plug capability, longer life due to load balancing, greater and easier manageability, flexibility of configuration, and flexibility of shut-down sequence. Compaq Advantage - In servers with traditional power supplies, power switches connect directly to the power lines. As a result, if the switch is accidentally turned off, power immediately disconnects from the system, which could disrupt functions and cause loss of critical information. With Compaq's exclusive IPS, the power switch connects to a microcontroller, which ensures a proper shutdown of the system. q Virtual Interface (VI) Architecture - is a distributed messaging specification that provides an open architecture promoting clustered computing with a transport layer and Application Programming Interface (API) for message passing. This specification can be utilized by software and hardware vendors to provide high speed and low latency communications between servers in a System Area Network (SAN). Key Benefits - VI Architecture is designed to be hardware independent and compatible with current network protocols such as Ethernet, ATM, and ServerNet. This ability to rely on existing communications adapters and media will help migrate existing protocols to VI Architecture. Since VI Architecture is also processor independent, it will allow the architecture to be implemented into silicon, therefore further improving communication performance. VI Architecture also reduces or removes the protocol stack(s) for send/receive and read/write for applications, thus removing a large percentage of operating system and server processing overhead for functions such as LAN and WAN packetizing and depacketizing. This architecture provides customers high degrees of application and data availability as well as increased application performance. In addition, scalability is enhanced by partitioning the application(s) into more efficient subprograms executing on different clustered nodes and passing dynamic information only as required to complete the transaction(s). 5 Refer to White Paper PCI Hot-Plug Technology, Doc. No. 398a/1196 for more information. 6 Refer to White Paper Intelligent Power Supply Technology, Doc. No. ECG025.0897 for more information. 6